Learner management: Sign up and organize members

Extend community invitations so everyone can join the party

The easiest way to drive membership and sign-ups is to reach out to a pre-existing base of customers or users. Depending on your use case (e.g. whether you’re a bootcamp vs. onboarding employees through employee training), this can look different.

Sign up your internal team

This seems like an obvious one, but it’s crucial: make sure the right people have the right access! Instructors, finance team members, and mentors: give access early on so they have plenty of time to explore.

Disco allows for various membership levels, like owner, admin, and member. Each of these groups has different privileges and privacy levels. But beyond that, you can also create different tiers and private groups.

This can be especially useful when you’re using Disco for internal teams who all have different kinds of internal training needs, including compliance training, but still require general company onboarding info. Easily bulk assign team members to different teams and channels, as well as different learning cohorts so they can connect with new team members at the same level.

Invite alumni to reconnect via your new learning management system (LMS)

Alumni are the low-hanging fruit for your new course. Having already interacted with your content, they’re already a more engaged audience and won’t need the hard pitch that a completely new face might.

A simple email inviting them to connect via your new Disco platform is a great place to start. Personalize the email using Disco AI to use their name, company, and ideally, the previous course they took.

Then, share what makes your new content so great by highlighting some of Disco’s unique features, like the dedicated alumni-only channel you created with the optional virtual catch-up event every month, the content library of resources, and the ability to create, manage, and sell online courses. (You did create that super special alumni content, right…?)

Additionally, streamline your workflow with Disco's automation templates, which make managing emails and sending messages to new invites a breeze. These tools save you time and effort by automating repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on what matters most—engaging with your learners and enhancing their experience.

Share your online courses with your network

A picture says a thousand words, but a video screams ‘em from the rooftops. To drive enrollment, work your network by creating a short video highlight reel of some of the unique features your members will get when they sign up for your content.

Show off your latest module, highlight your different conversation channels, and share as many testimonials as possible raving about how easy and fun it is to interact with and learn from your content via the Disco learning platform, which seamlessly integrates online learning resources to enhance the educational experience.

Send bulk invites

Disco lets you send invites three ways: via an invite link, email, and bulk invites. An invite link allows you to copy and paste your link anywhere you please: your LinkedIn profile, an industry Slack channel, a newsletter: wherever.

Have a few specific emails you want to add? Instantly add emails, personalize the message, and even assign roles right away—no having to wait until they accept to go in and change permissions.

But let’s say you’ve got a lot of people you want to invite, like your entire email list for your professional association, or your global employee roster.

That’s where bulk invites come in handy: big time. As an admin, head into your Admin Area, and click on Members. In the top right corner, you’ll see a box that says Invite. Once there, you’ll see the three options mentioned.

Click Bulk invite, then upload a CSV file that includes member names (first and last) and emails, and let Disco do its thing. Effective training management through bulk invites streamlines the process of organizing and automating the delivery and tracking of training initiatives, making it easier to manage large groups of people.

Manage members with group designations

Member grouping gives administrators and owners ultimate flexibility in gatekeeping and highlighting information. Whether you need private channels for discussing assignment results or separate courses for different cohorts, creating and assigning groups gives you the ability to make it happen: fast.

Additionally, it allows educators to track learner progress by monitoring community engagement and performance through comprehensive reports detailing each learner's course status, including initiation, completion, and learning assessment scores.

Assigning different groups and subgroups

There are limitless ways to group cohorts together; it all depends on the needs of your team and your learners. Blended learning, which merges traditional classroom instruction with online educational tools, can be facilitated by creating different groups and subgroups.

Below are just a few ways to create designations:

• Geography: For global companies, time zones, and languages can present unintentional roadblocks to open and frequent communication. Create groups by city, timezone, or region to make regional announcements and live events a breeze.
• Function: Different teams have different teams, regardless of where they are or when they started. Cater to different learning needs depending on what internal team someone is on, what bootcamp course they signed up for, or their seniority level.

Here's a quick tutorial on how to create groups in Disco:

Encourage social outreach with member details

Before Facebook was a hotbed for boomer memes and buy-sell groups, it was a straightforward online space that allowed you to discover and connect with peers.

Users uploaded a photo, added their (real) name, and shared details about where they were from, their interests, and how to contact them. It made for an easy way to spark a conversation (“You also love Dashboard Confessional?!”) while still allowing for a certain degree of privacy.

Think of your Disco community as the same, just (much) better; your learners will get the most out of their social connections when they create robust profiles, making them easily searchable in your member database. This also allows for centralized access to training materials, ensuring that learners can quickly find and utilize the resources they need. Here’s how:

Creating informative user profiles

When a new user signs up for Disco, they’ll be invited to create a profile. All the basics are there—name, photo, short bio—but it doesn’t stop there. Training programs can also be highlighted in user profiles, showcasing the structured learning paths available.

Public features

• Cover photo: This can be a personal photo, a branded company snap, or a templated info image sharing key info like team, cohort, or location.
• Connection details: A LinkedIn profile, website, or other way to connect IRL.
• Time zone: Lean into the global community and never wonder why someone replies outside of your personal work hours.
• Achievements: A great way to share your certifications from completed courses and assignments.

Semi-private features

• Learning interests: Visible only to admin, learners can share what they hope to get out of your course or social community.
• Community support: Learners select optional ways that they hope to connect and support the community at large.

Personal features

• Events: See a list of past and upcoming events you’ve registered for, as well as your attendance.
• Experiences: Review courses you’ve either developed or registered for.
• Notifications: Toggle email notifications for experiences like new posts or curriculum content, as well as manager-only notifications like new assignment submissions or event capacity.

Making the most of your member directory

The Disco member directory is a beautifully simplistic view of every member of your social learning platform.

Members can view all other community members as well as their different groups, so it’s easy to find someone new and see something in common. Filter by groups, or search for someone in particular.

Admin and managers have even more freedom to dive deep to better support learners. Through the Profile Fields filter, the admin can filter by Community Support choices so they can immediately identify what learners want to get out of their cohort and make it happen.

This streamlined filtering and searching capability enhances the training process by allowing for more targeted and effective support.

Onboard members with ease

Great onboarding can make or break someone’s overall experience.

Identifying the best learning management system (LMS) is crucial for effective onboarding, as it helps in building, launching, and managing courses tailored to organizational needs. In a Glassdoor study conducted by the Brandon Hall Group, researchers confirmed it: effective onboarding can boost new hire retention by 82%.

The question is, how do you ensure your onboarding is fast, simple, and informative?

Write a general message to welcome new members

Nothing says, ‘You’re gonna love it here’ then a message to welcome your incoming learners and set the stage for an environment they’ll love.

On the main Chats feed, you’re able to send a general message welcoming everyone to the incoming cohort and outlining all the oh-so-important next steps for them to take, while also getting them pumped up about what’s to come. This is a great opportunity to highlight the benefits of your online training programs, which enhance accessibility and engagement for all new members.

Create a simple onboarding guide for employee training cohorts

Much like this guide is created for you, you’ve got to create something for your learners. The best part? You can do it right in your learning management system.

Consider including various types of training in your onboarding guide, such as sales training, to enhance your team's skills and effectiveness.

Under the Learning tab, click Add Product in the top right-hand corner. While you previously created your courses here, you can also create a mandatory ‘fake’ course that ensures every team member is set up for onboarding success.

• Provide clear, step-by-step instructions on how to create a strong profile, where to find need-to-know documents or courses, and how to connect with other members.
• Suggest a few community chats that might spark their interest in addition to those mandatory for their program or course.
• Add assignments they can quickly and easily mark as complete, like completing a bio, sending a group message, and signing up for an event.

Establish community guidelines

‍Creating a safe and respectful environment is important for every community. Make sure you’ve created clear expectations with community guidelines that clearly dictate rules and best practices around privacy, harassment, etc.

When evaluating the best learning management systems, it's crucial to consider how these guidelines can be integrated to ensure informed decisions for your specific business needs.Post these guidelines under your Resources library. You can also link them in your onboarding document and require all your learners to view them and leave a comment or emoji to indicate they’ve read and understand the guidelines. Double-check that everyone has complied via the Analytics tool.

‍Pro tip: You can use Disco AI to help get you started!

Wrap things up with certifications

Remember when you were a kid and you’d receive certificates for things like ‘excellent attendance’ or ‘positive attitude’? Well, turns out people really like that sort of thing—even as adults.

Creating certificates for your learners after they complete a course, or module, or attend an event using Adobe Learning Manager can be a really special and welcoming way to show your appreciation for them. Certificates are tangible recognition of all the effort, time, and skills that they put into your program, and it’s proof that they worked hard, and paid off.

Another bonus? Learners are likely to show off their certificates online, meaning more eyes on your program and potential referrals to join in.